Africa's not for sissies.

Free Fire

(2016)

(SPOILERS) I had low expectations for Free Fire, as nothing I’ve seen by Ben Wheatley has equalled the hype surrounding him. Yet this, which has garnered a somewhat mixed reaction, is streets ahead of his previous form, a very funny, delightfully-staged “bottle episode” period crime movie with an eclectic cast bouncing deliriously off each other.

Wheatley’s critical moment really occurred with Kill List, which ever so slightly left me with that feeling you get when you weren’t in on the joke. If that’s his outright horror picture, there’s nevertheless a streak of the macabre persisting through all his genre diversions to date (his next is a sci-fi featuring Alicia Vikander battling giant crabs with a shotgun …) Free Fire’s no different, but here he’s wallowing in the ineptitude of violence, taking the warehouse setting of Reservoir Dogs but straining the tension through ghoulish giggles. An arms deal goes south not for reasons of double-crossing (although that does come into the mix) but due to a dispute between a couple of supporting idiots on the fringes of both parties.

Wheatley’s frequent good luck charm Michael Smiley excels as IRA man Frank, who with a very breezy Cillian Murphy (Chris) is arranging to purchase some MI6s that turn out to be AR70s (no, I wouldn’t know the difference either) from Sharlto Copley’s Vernon (in full-on South African scumbag mode). In the formers’ camp are Brie Larson (Justine), Enzo Cilenti (Bernie) and a hilariously useless Sam Riley (Stevo). Riley’s accent most certainly isn’t going to win him any awards, but his dishevelled inadequate is gifted some marvellously puerile lines (and, ultimately, the most OTT death scene).

On Copley’s team are Armie Hammer’s Ord (magnificently superior and, with Chris, one of the few present who seems to be able to shoot straight), Babou Ceesay’s Martin, who looks like a goner when he’s shot in the head, until he isn’t, Jack Reynor’s Harry (sporting odious chin whiskers and an attitude that winds pretty much everyone up, even on his side; he’s the one kicks things off when he shoots Stevo) and Noah Taylor’s Gordon. Also showing up is Patrick Bergin, who I completely failed to recognise, but it has been about 25 years since I saw him in anything.

Wheatley and regular co-writer Amy Jump (also editing collaborators; laudably, the geography of the action is only confusing when it’s supposed to be confusing) deliver wall-to-wall one-liners and putdowns (it’s hard to believe Murphy didn’t think it was a comedy when he read it, even given the fair amount of improvisation that was encouraged on set), and not a little John Denver to punctuate the proceedings (the score itself from Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury displays moments of greatness too, particularly The Phone Rings).

Stevo assumes Vernon, “an international asshole” who was mistaken for a child genius and never got over it, is Austrian because of his accent. Copley revels in being a complete tool, attempting the tough act (“Africa’s not for sissies”) before squealing over a flesh wound, suggesting Hammer deal with the situation (“You distract him with your badinage and I leave”) and professing survival skills developed with Rhodesian special forces (“Hey Vern, I like your cardboard armour”).

Chisel-jawed Ord also comes in for much mockery (“Hey Ord, I bet you thought you were too handsome to get shot, huh?”; “Save it for your fucking autobiography”) and the only problem with the best line, attributed to Stevo (“I forgot whose side I’m on”), is that it comes too early, accompanied by insufficient mayhem to land at the most effective moment.

The ‘70s duds and hair are on the fancy dress side, sure, but the location (actually in Brighton) is a truly fetid dump of dirty needles, rubble and puddles, offering little cover while everyone scrambles for some, the best they can, amid wild gunfire and ridiculous ricochets. Wheatley excels in his camera placement picks, establishing tension and claustrophobia from limited lines of sight and movement. His only concessions to the main arena are an upstairs room containing a ringing telephone and the entrance corridor, but when action proceeds to those locations it’s just as contained, usually because characters have been reduced to crawling the distance.

Perhaps on the basis of past such setups (Reservoir Dogs not least), I was expecting a reveal of an undercover cop that never came, but Justine’s double-cross – though it had occurred to me she might be that non-existent cop – did come as a final shocker, especially since Ord and Chris are just about to grab a conciliatory beer. Chris is so gracious in his demise (“I’m sorry, you got in the way” admits Justine, not such a sharp shooter) you rather wish better for him (although, as with Dogs, the police arrive just in time to spoil Justine’s clean getaway).

That said, everyone here is so entertaining (maybe Taylor fails to etch out a memorable character), you don’t really want to see any of them die. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but a few more like this and I might be a Wheatley convert. I’m not sure his dabblings are any deeper or more invested in “character” than, say, David O Russell’s genre washes, but there’s more personality and less cynicism. And he also knows not to outstay his welcome.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

Jeeves and Wooster 3.3: Cyril and the Broadway Musical (aka Introduction on Broadway) Well, that’s a relief. After a couple of middling episodes, the third season bounces right back, and that's despite Bertie continuing his transatlantic trip. Clive Exton once again plunders Carry On, Jeeves but this time blends it with a tale from The Inimitable Jeeves for the brightest spots, as Cyril Basington-Basington (a sublimely drippy Nicholas Hewetson) pursues his stage career against Aunt Agatha's wishes.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994) (SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction ’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump . And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

Monte Carlo or Bust aka Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969) (SPOILERS) Ken Annakin’s semi-sequel to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines tends to be rather maligned, usually compared negatively to its more famous predecessor. Which makes me rather wonder if those expressing said opinion have ever taken the time to scrutinise them side by side. Or watch them back to back (which would be more sensible). Because Monte Carlo or Bust is by far the superior movie. Indeed, for all its imperfections and foibles (not least a performance from Tony Curtis requiring a taste for comic ham), I adore it. It’s probably the best wacky race movie there is, simply because each set of competitors, shamelessly exemplifying a different national stereotype (albeit there are two pairs of Brits, and a damsel in distress), are vibrant and cartoonish in the best sense. Albeit, it has to be admitted that, as far as said stereotypes go, Annakin’s home side win

Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993) (SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) (SPOILERS) There’s something daringly perverse about the attempt to weave a serious-minded, generation-spanning saga from the hare-brained premise of The Place Beyond the Pines . When he learns he is a daddy, a fairground stunt biker turns bank robber in order to provide for his family. It’s the kind of “only-in-Hollywood” fantasy premise you might expect from a system that unleashed Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Point Break on the world. But this is an indie-minded movie from the director of the acclaimed Blue Valentine ; it demands respect and earnest appraisal. Unfortunately it never recovers from the abject silliness of the set-up. The picture is littered with piecemeal characters and scenarios. There’s a hope that maybe the big themes will even out the rocky terrain but in the end it’s because of this overreaching ambition that the film ends up so undernourished. The inspiration for the movie

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) (SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron ’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison. Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War , Infinity Wars I & II , Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok . It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions ( Iron Man II ), but there are points in Age of Ultron whe

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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